Into The Dark
by CitrusCity
Summary: Edward bites Bella on the first day of school and subsequently runs away, sick with guilt. A newborn Bella must track him down with the help of the other Cullens and convince him to forgive himself. Can it be done? What will their lives be like afterward?
1. Chapter I

**Chapter I: Vampire**

As I can remember, biology class with Edward Cullen was more than a nightmare to me.

I had never in my life been on the receiving end of such a hateful glare. He hated me at first sight, his strangely coal black eyes were flat and opaque, his irises blended with his pupils. It was more than disconcerting to have the face of Apollo staring at you with such hatred. His nose wrinkled, he averted his face, his black eyes still narrowed. I wondered: did I smell? The only thing I could smell was the innocent scent of the strawberry shampoo wafting from my hair.

I felt my face heat and stared down at the paper in front of me, doing my best to concentrate on the lecture and ignore him. I didn't do well. I often peaked through the curtain of my brown hair to sneak a glance at him. Every time I looked, his expression became more and more frightening. At that point in my ridiculous human thoughts, I began to compare him to Hades, impossibly beautiful yet frightening beyond belief. I remember noticing his hands clutching the edge of the desk as if he were holding on for life. The tendons underneath his opaque, pale skin stood out like taught cords.

The minute hand on the clock seemed to take creep around the clock's white face like a sloth. The class was my longest by far. I wondered if it was because of his horrible glare.

When the bell rang, I slipped out of the door with one more small backwards glance Edward's way. He was no longer there; he'd somehow managed to sneak out of the door ahead of me.

After school, the face of Hades, Edward, still floated before me. It was impossibly beautiful, impossibly hateful. The sad thing was that his reaction towards me was the most remotely exciting thing that had happened all day.

Mrs. Cope smiled at me when I walked into her small, warm office. Edward Cullen was there. I fought the urge to walk straight back out and into the slight mist outside. I waited at the corner of her desk to hand her the note clutched in my sweating palm. The door behind me opened. Edward jerked upwards. His eyes shot towards my face. His expression was not the same as it was in biology. He now seemed to be cold and calculating, the battle that had been occurring on his beautiful face had been resolved. He looked to me like a lion stalking its prey. I shivered. Edward quickly rotated on his heel and, with a few sharp parting words to Mrs. Cope, left through the door in two quick, long strides.

"How did your first day go, dear?" Mrs. Cope asked me.

"It was fine." That was a lie. I was pathetic enough to let Edward Cullen's hateful stares ruin my day. I felt horrified as tears pricked at the back of my eyes, painfully, like tiny little pins. I refused to cry in front of her. She looked as if she didn't believe my statement. I wondered if my eyes were turning red and quickly left the room before I could break down like a little baby.

Outside the cold wind and light drizzle hitting my face cleared my head, but only for a millisecond. Edward Cullen's figure appeared in my path.

"Bella." All of the anger, hatred, and coldness from earlier were gone from his expression. His velvet voice caressed my name as if I was a goddess, someone on equal level with him. I stopped dead in my tracks.

"Wha…" My weak voice trailed off lamely, I couldn't form the words. I took a few minutes to wait, staring into his onyx eyes, before I finished lamely: "Yeah?"

He was unerringly smooth and blindingly fast. He reached for me and his hand made contact with my arm roughly. He quickly pulled me close to him, hoisted me roughly over his shoulder, and I felt the temperature of my skin drop, my heart made a bid for freedom as it jumped into my throat. His skin was hard and cold, just like his gaze had been earlier. It felt all wrong. It triggered a gut twisting reaction in me; something about that touch was sickeningly horrifying.

But before I could process the horror his cold gaze and touch induced in me, we were surrounded by tall trees that blocked out what little sun fought its way through the clouds and impossibly bright green ferns. My eyes widened. In another millisecond he was moving towards me, his teeth barred. I felt his cold lips make contact with my throat.

All I remember was how much pain there was in the next few seconds. I kicked and thrashed against him as I slowly felt my life force leaving me. I clawed against that impossibly hard skin, knowing it would be of no use anyways. One of my fingernails broke off, painfully, as I tried to claw at his neck. I bled freely from the base of that nail.

Within two seconds, the smell of my own blood was swirling around me, permeating the thick forest air. The forest did wild dances in front of my eyes before the darkness came down to meet me and I passed out.

I wasn't sure if I was awake or asleep. I wasn't sure where I was. All I remembered was the pain, immeasurable, innumerable. I lay there, I was sure I thrashed and screamed. It felt like a thousand tiny creatures nibbled away at my flesh, inside and out. I didn't understand time any longer. I couldn't even remember my own name.

This dragged on for two lifetimes, ten, twenty, I couldn't tell. What I could tell was that, by my estimation around the twentieth lifetime, the pain began to recede and be concentrated all at the same time. My heart felt like it was going to explode out of my chest, to break my breast bone and burst right through me. It beat rapidly, so rapidly that the friction alone could have been hot enough to kill me.

I didn't know if I screamed, I can't remember. All I knew was that, at some point, the pain stopped and, at that point, the bass pounding of my heart stopped.

Was I dead? Probably.

Then I heard voices. Angels? Demons? I opened my eyes, wondering what kind of heaven or hell I was in. There was a single light bulb hanging above me, it was off. I could see the tiny little filament inside, burned, but not recently. It was old and rusty. The light had gone out ages ago. I lay on a warm table, it felt like steel. I could hear the rush of wind as I breathed in and out; it was as loud as if a stampede had been running through the room. I smelled the damp air, the smell of soil and water. Stagnant water lay in the old, unused pipes above me.

There were the voices again. The came from above me in pained whispers.

"There." A smooth baritone male voice sounded from above me, it sounded relieved.

There was a sigh.

"She's finished."

The words were strange, the voices sounded like they should be at a funeral, but the words didn't fit into the context.

"I'll check on her." It was the high pitched female voice.

"I'll go with you."

The voices were only whispers, yet I heard every word clearly. There were soft footsteps on wooden stairs; they grew closer and closer with each passing second. I felt myself growing nervous, only the racing heart in my chest was conspicuously absent. I heard the air stir around the feet as each footstep fell with a "thud" on the steps. I smelled a hint of leather and the fresh smell of cotton, accompanied with two other foreign smells as the figures entered the room.

I was getting increasingly nervous; they were coming towards me, coming for me. I quickly did math in my head, from the sound of their footsteps they were three yards away. I leaped from the metal table I'd been resting on, landed in a defensive crouch, and took in my surroundings all in a matter of milliseconds.

The two figures froze, but I didn't relax.

All around me were rows and rows of metal drawers with little empty placards, all across the walls and all the way up to the cielings. It was a comfortable temperature. Not one light was working in the entire place, yet I could recognize Alice Cullen across the room, staring at me warily, along with yet another impossibly beautiful, pale god next to her. There were several metal tables, just like the one I'd been resting on moments before, scattered in a heap around the room. Some were broken, their mangled steel legs were littered across the room. The floor beneath my bare feet was hard and tiled, but chipped in places. It was covered in a thin layer of dirt and grime and grass was growing in between the cracks in the tiles.

"Bella." The word was spoken by the taller one, the blonde man next to Alice. It was utterly soothing and soft, meant to calm me. I relaxed only infinitesimally, my surprisingly quick muscles softened a very little bit. His posture of openness, of transparency, the way he held his palms forward and his shoulders back, something about it oozed complacency. It was something normal, unthreatening.

I didn't speak. Alice was a familiar face, if not still a stranger, and she held the same relaxed position as the tall one. I sent her a frantically questioning look. She did nothing to answer my frantic look. She whispered to herself in a voice like wind chimes:

"I wish Jazz were here."

Jazz? Who was that? It didn't matter. I focused my attention back to the tall one. He was introducing himself.

"I'm Doctor Carlisle Cullen," he said in the same calming voice. "I'm very sorry we have to meet under such circumstances."

What circumstances? This did seem like a very dire situation, though, now that I thought about it. I had just undergone lifetimes of torture and I had awoken feeling utterly dazed yet perfectly comprehensive in a strange room that looked like a morgue.

That was when it hit me. The drawers, the exam tables, the hanging light overhead; I was in a morgue.

"Doctor Cullen, nice to meet you." It seemed to be the proper thing to do, but I never relaxed any more, I didn't move away from the cold wall I was backed against.

After the sentence was out of my mouth, I took in another gasp of air in shock. There was something wrong with my voice. It sounded like the pealing ring of church bells, or the softer ring of a set of hand bells. My eyes got large, very large. Dr. Cullen ignored my reaction, if he even noticed it.

"You will meet the rest of my family soon: Jasper, Emmet, Rosalie, and Esme." I quickly noticed that Edward's name was absent from the list. Had it been an intentional omission, or a mistake? I also realized who "Jazz" was likely to be; Jasper.

"Where am I?" Again, that voice. It was all wrong. I moved my hands up to my throat and gasped at what I felt there. The skin beneath my fingers was lukewarm, but it was dully hard and soft, like a soft piece of marble or a rock covered in a layer of velvet. I gasped.

"You're in the morgue of an abandoned hospital, St. Joseph's." His willingness to tell the truth, because it was obvious he wasn't lying, made me relax a bit more.

"What has happened to me?" I felt the desperation in the voice as I clawed at the hard skin at my throat. Something painful stabbed the back of my eyes, it felt like I would cry, but the warm wetness of tears didn't fall over my face.

Alice moved toward me, slowly, with her hands up. I gazed at her wildly, my first instinct was to crouch and attack her before she could attack me. But she left herself exposed, walked slowly, and made as much noise with her footfalls as possible. This was not an offensive move coming from her. I stiffened and straightened up.

"Come on, Bella." She grabbed my hands in her warm iron grip and dragged them away from my throat, pinning them at my sides.

She was even lovelier than I remembered. She was a modern snow white with the grace of a ballerina. Her inky black hair was so dark it didn't show any shadows, just one solid, ink black color framing her impossibly pale face. Her butterscotch colored eyes stared into mine. I didn't blink at the intensity of her stare, I stood absolutely still. Surprisingly, I felt no burning in my eyes.

"We need to talk," she said.

I heard Carlisle stepping out of the room silently, the stale air stirred by his feet made a soft, echoing noise in my ears. I sat down quickly, perched myself on a morgue table. I watched Alice standing in front of me, her expression was fearful. It seemed out of place on her face.

"Do you remember what happened to you? What is your last memory?"

I didn't have to think hard. Edward was beckoning me, I followed him. It suddenly seemed incredibly stupid. From my standpoint now, it was glaringly obvious that he was on the hunt. I wondered if I would have followed him even if I knew that fact. I didn't want to think about that answer. Instead I watched the ancient dust particles swirling around this abandoned morgue.

"Yes." My voice was so wrong. I averted my eyes from Alice's, suddenly I was intimidated by her stare. "Edward… Called me. He took me into the woods, and there was pain." I stopped talking. "There was a lot of pain."

Alice seemed to think this as good a jumping off point as any.

"Edward bit you." I was careful not to react to this proclamation, I kept my face passive. Somehow, in a twisted way, this made sense. "We are vampires."

She spoke as if she was politely discussing the weather. Nothing was strange about this statement. She watched my reaction gravely. I stayed frozen.

"Am I dead?" It certainly looked that way. Was this Alice in front of me, in all her loveliness, an angel? Or, was she a demon in her vampiric tendencies?

She let out a high, tinkling laugh.

"No, Bella. You're not dead."

I was silent. I wasn't dead, but that implied that I was not wholly alive either.

"Doesn't it depend on what your definition of death is?" I asked softly.

Alice smiled wryly and joined me, still moving slowly and deliberately, on the examination table. She sat a safe half a foot away as she continued to speak.

"We are not vampires in the classical sense. We don't feed on humans. We feed on the blood of animals." She smiled at me, and the smile lit up her face. "We have a family; we stick together and encourage each other. We have all agreed to extend an invitation towards you, would you like to join our family?"

I was still frozen. I wasn't shocked. I knew, somehow in a corner of my racing mind, that I had undergone a major change. It seemed to _fit_ somehow. How strong would the desire for human blood be? Would it be controllable?

At the moment I felt sane, I wasn't like the crazed, thirsting vampires of legends and books. I did feel, however, a burning sensation at the back of my throat. It was as if I had a horrible case of strep, or as if I'd been in a dessert with no water all my life. Only, it wasn't water I wanted. I knew what I wanted. The burning reached past just the roof of my mouth and the back of my throat, it scorched with blazing heat down my esophagus and pooled in my stomach. I shuddered at the sensation.

"You should hunt with me." Alice recognized my shudder. "We will find something close, away from humans, I'll help you."

Mentally, I was protesting, but my thirst had a mind of its own. It prompted my body to stand up and follow Alice out of the morgue, up the steps, and through a narrow hallway to a window.

There would be no animals outside the abandoned hospital. All I saw were run down homes and office buildings, there was not a soul in sight and the smell of pollution, waste, and dirt hung in the night air. It looked as if the area had died with the hospital. Just to the left, probably a half a mile away, I spotted a thin strip of forest that blocked this run down area from another that was just as run down.

"In there," Alice said, nodding towards the strip of forest. "Just give in to your senses," she instructed. "There are no humans around here anymore; you only need to worry about finding an animal to sustain you."

I listened to her instructions. Then I ran. It was the most exhilarating feeling I've ever had. She had to struggle to keep up behind me. The smelly wind was hitting me in the face, I must have been a nearly invisible streak as I ran, but I could see every single object around me in perfect detail and clarity. I saw a fly about three feet away from me, heard half a buzz of its wings in the span of the millisecond that it took me to pass it.

I was in the forest and Alice was behind me in an almost immeasurable amount of time. It was dark and quiet.

"Inhale, listen. If you hear and smell an animal, go for it. Let your instincts take over," she commanded. I did what she said.

There were birds dozing in their nests, there were a few squirrels sleeping as well. Nothing remotely appetizing made itself heard. I expanded my hearing, listened harder. It was only after I expanded my hearing so that I could hear for miles did I sense something a little interesting. There were the loud thuds of steady heartbeats, the chomping and grinding sounds of a cow chewing on grass. There was a cattle farm somewhere far away, past the run down and abandoned old suburbs and well into the country side. There was a stray cow just outside the barbwire fence, lazily chewing.

I took off before thinking and I was there within a minute. The cow's eyes widened at the sight of me, her normal, soft moo turned into one of desperation as I leaped on her. Her racing heartbeat quieted in half a second as my lips instinctively found where her pulse was, my teeth cut through to where her blood flowed as if she was made of butter.

I drank. The pain in my throat dulled and became less noticeable, but it was still there, a constant, slightly numbed pain.

I felt saner then. My mind cleared, I could now think of one thousand things at once instead of only one hundred. I felt stronger and more powerful, yet calmer. I felt more like the Bella I used to be.

My rapid mind quickly jumped onto another thought and latched on to it.

What would this mean for Charlie?

Alice was behind me, I sensed and smelled her. She was calm, quiet, and as threatening as the snail inching along the tall pine tree three feet away from her. She was waiting for something, I'm sure. She was probably waiting for my frantic outburst now that I had been fed and could think coherently.

"What will happen to my dad?" I showed no outward stress, but inside I was cringing.

"We left him a note that said you ran away," she answered.

"He'll assume I went back with Renee." My voice, Charlie would never recognize its bell like tone.

I'd been with him for only a short time and he'd been so happy to have his only daughter at home. Now I was gone. The real Bella, the one he knew, was dead.

My mind reeled.

I was no longer myself. That much was true. What would Renee think when I stopped e-mailing? Would she call Charlie in a panic? I wondered if that had already happened, if they had collectively realized that I was gone. Had they called the police? What would the little town of Forks think; the mysterious Cullens and Bella Swan had disappeared in the same instant, would it look suspicious?

With these and all of my other thousands of frivolous thoughts bouncing around in my head, I turned to Alice and addressed the thought that was most pertinent to her.

"Won't it be trouble for you if we disappeared around the same time?"

She shrugged casually.

"They have no reason to suspect us. Carlisle spread the story that Edward…" She trailed off, assessing my expression for whatever reason before she continued. "That his brother died and that we were moving to be with his wife and help her."

"Does Edward really have a brother?" I couldn't stop myself from asking before it popped into my head.

"No." Alice looked at me. "You want to see what you look like, don't you?" She asked.

"Yeah of course." I felt stupid for not thinking about it before. Would my countenance be changed drastically? I wondered if I would be as lovely as Alice.

Now that I was somewhat sane, I could hear the silent sound of freezing water to the left of us, a river churning slowly underneath the cover of ice above it.

"The frozen river?"

"Good job, Bella," Alice said, as if rewarding a dog. I smiled at her and we ghosted off towards the river, jogging nearly one hundred miles an hour and not making a sound.

_A/N: _

_Yay! Chapter one is finished. _

_I realized halfway through writing this while I was searching for some Twilight fanfic that there is a story out there with the same plot (Bella getting bit at her first day of school). I didn't read that story because I didn't want it to affect my writing, and I really didn't want to not write this story because there was another one with the same plot out there. I fully plan on reading that story after I'm done, though. _

_Review please! It would be good to know what you think. _


	2. Chapter II

**Chapter II: Edward **

I wasn't able to get over my natural beauty.

It was hours after I'd stared at that reflection in the rough, unclear surface of the river and marveled at my perfectly shaped face, the skin that was still pale but seemed to glow with beauty, my hair that was no longer a plain sheet of brown but straight chocolate silk on either side of my face. My eyes, they were the most unnerving. Their depths were redder than I'd ever imagined anything could be. They were clear, pure red. I vaguely realized, through my terror, that they were still beautiful in the horror they caused in me, their unnatural color a warning to the Bella inside of me, the real Bella, that I was a monster now.

But when Alice and I ran home, our feet barely hitting the seemingly soft pebbles beneath us, the racing and uncontrollable thoughts in my newborn mind were already turning towards another subject: Edward.

He wasn't in the decrepit hospital lobby that Alice led me in. All around me were signs of death, depression, and sickness in the old fashioned hospital instruments strewn around the broken building, and I thought for a half a second that it was odd for these rusty, broken instruments to be in the lobby. The only signs of life anywhere around me were the five glowing vampires, and it was ironic, because by any normal definition we were not alive. We were as cold as the grave, as beautiful as any angel, but as inherently wicked as any demon.

Sunlight poured in, muted by the clouds above us and by the dingy, high hospital windows, and I wondered for another millisecond at the glittering crystals embedded in my too pale skin.

"This is Bella." Alice enunciated her every word, her beautiful voice rang around the empty, dark space, though I knew it wasn't necessary to speak anywhere above a whisper. Angels, demons, vampires, whatever they were, they all stood up and walked deliberately toward me, hands up, and an arms length of space between them to create a clear and easy exit for me. I felt myself instinctively tensing and I hated the inherent mistrust I felt.

"Bella, this is Esme, Rosalie, Jasper, Emmet, and of course you already know Carlisle."

"Nice to meet you," I said. My voice was still beautiful, calm, despite the tenseness I could feel gathering in my muscles, the uneasiness clenching my silent heart as I stared at them. I vaguely noticed the slight tenseness in Jasper's muscles, the clenching in his scarred jaw, and the uneasy looks that Alice was sending him. A thousand questions popped into my head, why did Jasper have those scars? Why was no one making a move or a sound? But, most prominently, where was Edward?

"Where's Edward?" I whispered. I knew they all heard me, and I was glad that I finally broke the silence.

"We don't know," Esme said. Her wide, golden eyes betrayed her sadness as the light, swirling with ancient dust, hit her face from the window above and caused the faint sparkles to glow just beneath her skin.

"What do you mean?"

"He ran away," Rosalie said. She shook nearly white hair out of her face, her tone uncaring, and I wondered how she could care so little for a family member. "We don't know where he went."

"Why?" It was out of my mouth as soon as it raced into my mind, I didn't take the time to consider that the question was rude, prying, until after it was out of my mouth and couldn't be taken back. It floated in the stale and stagnant air around us until Carlisle answered it a full three agonizing seconds later.

"He feels horrible that he changed you, Bella. He almost killed you, if Alice hadn't called me then there's no doubt in my mind that he would have."

The thought of dying at his fearsome hands didn't scare me as much as it should have. I contemplated it calmly, as one that was already dead, and wondered if that would have been a better fate. But, I suddenly erased that thought from my mind because Charlie and Renee were all that I'd had in my human life, all that had mattered to me, and vampire or not, half living was better than not living, because maybe I could see their faces again, tell them that I loved them, before they died and I kept living for an eternity without them.

"Oh."

My mind raced as I thought of the man that had changed me, that had ended my life, and all I wanted was to ensure that _his _life didn't end as well because of his guilt at ending something that, truthfully, didn't mean a lot to me.

"Alice is following him," Esme said, a small, hopeful tone evident in her voice. My red eyes snapped to her face and a questioning expression fell onto mine. "She can… see things," she said, answering my question before I could ask it.

"What?"  
"The future, glimpses of it," Alice said. "It's constantly changing, based on decisions and plans. Edward's already considered going to Mexico, Prague, and Argentina," she said.

"Wow," I said in amazement. I could feel the eyes on me, gauging my reaction to this revelation, and I could tell that they'd been planning on saving this news for when I'd calmed down. "What else can you guys do?" I asked curiously,

"Jasper calms people down, Edward reads minds," Rosalie said in a bored, uninterested tone. "Well, most minds." She smirked icily at me and a thousand and one questions popped into my head.

"How can he do that? And what do you mean most minds?"

"He couldn't read yours." Esme's tone was mournful as she looked at me. "We think that was why you drew his attention."

"Oh."

Once again, I was at a loss for words, and I duly noted that being a vampire made me no more charismatic than I was as a human. This brought me a split second of relief before my mind was off and reeling again.

"I could find him," I said. Esme's face turned hopeful for an incalculable fraction of a second, and then quickly changed to a combination of sadness and thankfulness.

"Bella, as a newborn, that's not a good idea," she said soothingly.

"Really," I said. "I feel fine." It was a lie, they knew it, but I plowed on. "I can bring him back; I just have to show him that I don't care that I'm a vampire." That was partially a lie as well, but they didn't have to know that.

"Bella, that's really a great offer," Carlisle said. "But I don't know if that's a really good idea, you haven't been around humans yet."

"Then take me out, today." I was determined now, determined to wipe the forced smile off of Esme's face, hiding her sadness, and replace it with a real one. I was determined to bring back the family member that I had caused them all to lose. "I can handle it, I promise."

They didn't take me out that day, but Carlisle guaranteed in soothing tones that they would, eventually, after I learned to hunt and control myself. They stayed in the old, abandoned hospital with me, and I learned that we were on the miserable and rainy outskirts of Chicago. I played Uno with Emmet for what seemed like forever and let Alice happily bring clothes home for me every single day.

It was a month later. Alice had dressed me in a pair of dark skinny jeans and a thick wool jacket with conspicuous designer tags that I was sure didn't cost as little as she assured me it did.

"_You _can pull off the skinny jean look," she said. "I'm too short and Rose's hips are too big, but you're the _perfect _size!" She squealed. I shushed her, but it was too late, because Rosalie's golden eyes flashed in anger and her hands were on her "too big" hips. I gave her a sheepish smile and she stalked out of the room.

"Alice, I've been here a month," I said mournfully. "I have more clothes than I've ever owned before and I can finally beat Emmet in Uno."

"You got lucky!" I heard Emmet calling below me. I could hear the sounds of what I thought was a basketball game drifting in from upstairs on the miniature battery powered TV Emmet had bought.

"So?"

"So, I need to find Edward," I said. "I feel so bad, I made you lose him, and I can tell that Esme is sad."

"Bella," Alice said, sitting down on an abandoned hospital table and patting the seat next to her. "It's too dangerous. You need time."  
"Look," I said. "I'll be fine, I won't hurt anyone. I've been really good."

"You have been."

There was a short pause in which I could practically see Alice thinking.

"What can you see me doing?"

"I see you going after him, but I don't know where you'll find him. Right now it's in New Zealand."

"Thank you, Alice," I said. I knew that what she said was her way of giving me the permission to go after Edward; I knew she missed him as much as the rest of her family.

"You should tell them," Alice said, nodding towards the floor beneath her, where we could hear the movements of the rest of the family. "They need to hear it straight from you."

I nodded my assent, though I'd rather avoid the confrontation all together and just leave; I knew that would hurt Esme's feelings.

"I'm going to go after Edward," I announced, standing in the center of the hospital lobby.

"But Bella," Esme whispered pleadingly. "We're making plans to move on; we've found a lovely house in Lake Charles."

"Louisiana?" I asked skeptically.

"It's rainy there, trust me," she said. I shook myself and forced my mind back on to the topic at hand.

"I'm going," I said. "I promise I'll find you when I find him. Alice can keep tabs on me."

I gave a hopeful smile to Alice, and she nodded encouragingly to me.

"Bella, you are my daughter now," Esme said. "And I would love to have you and Edward safe under my roof, but he is very… stubborn, and I can't see you bringing him back alone. He'll come back in a few decades. He always does."

"Just let me do this," I pleaded.

"Let her go." Carlisle looked at me as he said his next words. "I trust her to keep herself safe."

…

I pushed the Ray Bans Alice bought me as a going away present closer to my deep red eyes and clutched the phone she'd also bought deep in my pocket. I had an umbrella suspended over my head, creating a pool of shadow for me as I perused the streets of New York. I fielded strange and amazed stares, wishing I could shrink back into my umbrella's shadow and disappear. Eyes followed me everywhere I went, gazing at my pale skin and beautiful countenance.

I had to fly to New Zealand, I had no choice. How I wished I could run there, as I had to New York. Alice had not recommended swimming. She said that the dank, dark, and unknown depths of the open ocean beneath you could be unnerving, and I mentally shivered at the thought of being stranded above miles of freezing water teeming with sharks and strange fish, thousands of miles away from any land. It was then that I decided to run to New York and fly out of JFK Airport.

But I'd never planned on the eyes following me, the conversations about me.

"Look at that chick, man!"

"She's gorgeous!"

"What's with the umbrella?"

I turned away from all of them, ignoring them. The smell of humans all around me overloaded my senses; I could hear the blood pulsing through their veins and their hearts squeezing the red liquid through their oh-so-easily broken bodies. I was never as keenly aware as I was now that I was no longer one of them.

I tried to focus on the smell of pollution, the noise of construction and the honking of car horns. It was the only way to distract myself from the physical agony scorching down my throat, pooled in my stomach, and distantly echoing through my nerve endings as one human after another pushed and brushed up against me.

"Woah!" I heard the voice of a tiny girl beneath me; her curly blonde head only came to a little bit above my knees. She clutched her tired looking mother's hand and stared up at me. I could see the twitching of the skin on her jugular, it moved with the rhythm of the tiny heart I could hear in her chest. I zeroed in on her, but stopped myself from crouching, pouncing, and devouring the little life in front of me. "Are you a princess?" She asked.

I smiled at her, and knew I made a mistake, because she recoiled a little bit, her tiny body moving closer to her mother's, instinctively recognizing what her mind couldn't.

"No," I said, taken aback by her heart speeding up, the adrenaline leaking into her veins. She was scared of me. Her eyes widened, I closed my lips over my teeth, but it was too late. Her mother pulled her away from me and I kept going, the thought of the fear I provoked in that little girl distracting me on my way to the airport.

The next day I was in New Zealand. There were far, far less people there and it was a relief to be away from the crowds. It was cold and overcast, a relief that I readily welcomed as I tossed the conspicuous umbrella in my bag. Alice knew where Edward was staying and I easily found the hotel. It was an ancient building, squeezed between a record store and a coffee shop, with important looking business people entering and leaving, all dressed in black, all with suitcases clutched in their hands. I didn't smile at any of them as I passed; I kept my lips firmly over my teeth and my glasses pressed painfully close to my keen eyes.

"Can you tell me where Edward Cullen is staying?" I said in my wind-chime like voice, leaning on the warm mahogany of the front desk and looking at the astonished teenager through my annoyingly scratched and imperfect sunglasses.

"Um…" He stared at me and I recoiled away from him, knowing I'd gotten too close. I stood absolutely still and waited for him to gather his senses and turn towards the computer screen. "We're not really supposed to give that information out," he said weakly. "Sorry."

"Please?" I wheedled, not sure how to tempt the information out of him. I heard his heartbeat race as I leaned over the desk again, so I stayed in that position, despite the pain rippling down my throat.

"Um, I really don't…"

"For me?" I asked.

"Alright," he conceded. He glanced to his sides and wrote down Edward's room number, 313, on a scrap of paper.

"Thank you," I said, whirling away from him as quickly as I could. As I rapidly made my way up the creaking mahogany stairs, I realized that I'd made my exit much too quickly for a human, but I knew that I'd had to. I had no doubt that Edward had heard that conversation.

I easily forced the door open, neatly breaking the deadbolt. Inside it was dark, the mahogany canopy bed was made, and it was as if no one had been there. I could smell Edward's presence. He had left only a few seconds ago. I instinctively followed the trail into the darkened bathroom, outside an open window, onto the green copper roof of the hotel.

"Edward!" I shouted. He was a blur, running away from me, jumping silently and quickly from roof to roof. I easily followed his motions, making not a sound as I landed and took off gracefully.

I followed him quickly and silently into the outskirts of town, among tiny farmhouses and rolling green pastures, bleating sheep that scooted away from us in fear as we sped down a dirt country lane together. We were almost neck and neck as Edward headed towards the distant, rolling hills and the craggy peaks beyond them. The sky opened up, releasing its fury in the form of rain and lightning. I was engulfed with water in a matter of minutes; the smell of burnt air reached my nostrils as a line of bright yellow lightning was drawn down the grey sky, and then receded, with an echoing, booming clap of thunder.

I was even with him; I saw his golden eyes, as if in slow motion, turning to look at me with horror, anger, and guilt evident in their surfaces. I reached out quickly and stole his arm, pulling it down, and he fell into the hard ground, his fall barely cushioned by grass, and I fell with him, tumbling head over heels until I came to rest a few feet away.

He was getting up again, but I was too quick. I leapt on him, pinned him onto the moist grass, and straddled him.

"Edward," I breathed, amazed that I'd finally found him.

"Get off of me," he commanded in a hard voice, looking away from me towards the shadow of mountains visible only to our eyes through the sheets of rain. "What are you even doing here?" He growled angrily, whipping his head around to stare at my sunglass covered eyes. I pulled the glasses off and threw them aside, stared at him with my red eyes, and he winced.

"Come home," I pleaded. "Your family misses you."

I'd never noticed how truly handsome he was when I was a human. The cloudy memories I'd been going off of did him no justice. He was beautiful. His face, hard and angular, practically radiated even in the dank light of a rainy afternoon. His bronze hair was plastered to his forehead and face with rain that beaded on his skin and ran off him, onto the ground.

"They can't possibly miss me," he said mournfully. His voice rang with regret and anger. "I've betrayed them! Just look at what I did to you!"

He didn't struggle beneath me, but I stayed sitting on him, staring down at those golden eyes in amazement that I'd finally found their owner.

"You didn't do anything wrong," I soothed.

"I ruined your life, Bella."

"I had no life."

He glared at me, annoyance in his expression and his eyes.

"I can't go back to them," he said. "I murdered you."

"I'm sitting here, alive, aren't I?" I asked.

"You're not alive."

"Doesn't that depend on your definition of living?" I posed the question to him with arched eyebrows, the same question I'd asked Alice a month ago.

"Living is being able to do the things you love, to marry, have children, and die," Edward said. "You can't do any of those things, because of me."

"I don't care," I said.

"You do. You will."

"No I won't." I was adamant, determined to make him believe me, but he was just too stubbornly stuck in his own depression and self contempt.

"Yes, you will. Believe me. I already do."

His eyes were far away, staring off into the distance, and full of ancient pain. I stared at him, though he refused to look at me, and I could tell that this was going to take time.

_A/N: _

_I'm amazed I finished this chapter today, really, and I'm thankful to my one reviewer, LeLe1103, because she has received my official seal of awesomeness. _

_Anyhoo, this was only checked once, because I'm lazy. And, I'm a review whore, so PLEASE review for me. _

_PS: I know this is random, but the ocean thing I talked about while Bella is in New York is one of my fears. I was out on the ocean, swimming with my friends over Spring Break, and I realized how creepy it is that there are miles of ocean water and fish and sharks and stuff underneath you. To this day it still gives me the chills. _


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